Surge in coal demand could be attributed to the fact that power supply from hydel, nuclear and other sources fell by 12 pc, 36 pc & 7 pc respectively
Mumbai : The country has seen a decline in power generated by hydel, nuclear and other sources, revealed Union Minister of Coal, Piyush Goyal. Adding to it was a decline in coal production as coal ministry regulated production of coal. Despite repeated reminder, the power companies failed to stock up as per the requirement.
“For last 18 months, we have been regulating coal production. Actually, we were reducing coal production in a country that has an ability to produce more. This is because the coal companies have not be lifting coal,” he said this at annual convention of Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) in Mumbai.
He assured, “By end of September or first week of October, we will see coal based thermal power plant having adequate coal stocks and getting back to normal.”
In March 2017, coal production shot up to 68 million tonnes which was all the time high. Goyal claimed that there even small fires due to the stock as coal is highly combustible. He revealed that from February of 2016 to July of 2017, the ministry had to regulate coal production and bring it down.
“From the growth of 8.9 per cent in 2015-2016, we had to bring it down to (-) 3 per cent in 2016-17 as stocks were just piling up.” The power companies realised that they were getting coal when they required it. So, they stopped stocking coal.
Before cutting down on the production, the minister claimed that in the first quarter of this year his ministry urged power plant and state governments to stock up coal. “In the end, we wrote to the chief secretaries that impending monsoon will slow down supplies,” Goyal explained.
In coal mining regions in Odisha, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, due to floods the ability to transport coal sharply declined.
He stated that the surge in demand for coal could be attributed to the fact that power supply from hydel, nuclear and other sources fell by 12 per cent, 36 per cent and 7 per cent respectively last month. “We might have had a short blip for few days, where we had power shortage,” Goyal reiterated. He believes that this will reignite investment in the sector which was otherwise sluggish in the last few years. In August 2017, the despatch of coal from the coal mines was up by 17 per cent.
